


I hate a lot of things [But I hate you the most]

by NowWeOwnTheNight



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: BIG SPOILER ALERT, D BILLY BOYD SANG THE FAREWELL SONG CAN U BELIEVE BC I CANT, Follows canon of movie so sPOILER ALERT, M/M, SLAY MY LITTLE TOOK QUEEN SLAYYYY, anD WHO ELSE LOVED THE CREDIT ART AN, and bilbo hates a lot of things, canonical character deaths, established relationship kinda, gandalf's a lil bitch at the end of the battle tho jeeze, gdi this movie was so different but it was amazing, home is p important bc bilbo left his to help the company find their own rEMEMBER THAT, home is where the heart is, note the thE PLURAL, oh yeah story cool so, personally i think they got together after the eagles dropped them on the carrock, the wall scene was a little disappointing but oh well it was still good a f, there's a lot about lights and home, what was i doing, what with thorin almost dying and all, yeah so light and home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NowWeOwnTheNight/pseuds/NowWeOwnTheNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Or: No Longer Blind]</p><p>There were moments in the sluggish days searching for the Arkenstone under the mountain where he'd thought that maybe, after all they'd been through together, the mist would clear and Thorin would come back.</p><p>When it finally did, everything moved too quickly- and just as quickly as he returned, he was gone again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I hate a lot of things [But I hate you the most]

**Author's Note:**

> I jusT SAW THE MOVIE AND I CANT HELP BUT FEEL THAT THORIN AND BILBO'S PARTING MEANT SO MU C H AND JUST BURY ME NOW OKAY BYYYEEEE

Bilbo knew… from the second the rough demeanour dropped and Thorin Oakenshield, destined King under the Mountain, sung straight from the soul in his living room… he knew that his breath would be held until this being of tenseness found peace. Until he could keep _that_ smile, the one shared with his kin after their song, on the dwarf’s face longer than a fleeting memory of something good could last.

Not that it was a conscious decision, no- Bilbo resented the dwarf and his air of presumptuousness and his judgmental nature for a good part of their journey’s early stages. But of course, it became like a moth to a light- the sense of adventure, daring to go closer to the open flame, putting life on the line and rationality on hold as he became blinded by _it_ … whatever _it_ was.

He _hated_ , on several occasions, the way that Thorin disregarded Bilbo. Be it an idea, a comment, a complaint, or even the way in which he walked or set his bedroll out or sat at the fire and ate his food- Bilbo was always wrong, and Thorin was always right.

He _hated_ the coldness- how disgusting it was suited to Thorin, whenever Bilbo thought back to those days where they were still tiptoeing around one another while clomping on each other’s toes with purpose.

Of course, that all changed overnight, on the carrock- with a very down-dressed Thorin trying to thank a clotheless Bilbo properly for saving his live, tripping on his own words as much as he was his own feet while pacing nervously as Bilbo showered under a waterfall, screeching through the stream at Thorin to ‘leave, or at least, wait until I’m dressed, you blundering oaf-’… and the rest, they say, is history.

[Whenever Bilbo said that he hated Thorin for almost rolling them over the sheer cliff of the eagles outpost in his enthusiasm, Thorin whispered ‘worth it’ and nipped the hobbit’s pointed ear. Bilbo stopped hating it soon enough.]

 

*

 

Where there was light, out in the wilderness, there were orcs.

But where there was light, there was also beauty.

And it was not always the kind of light that orcs were capable of seeing.

It depended on what kind of light one was speaking of.

There’s physical light: from the sun, from a lantern, from fire. It can mean many things- Bilbo’s favourite was the one which his hearth emitted, early in the night, with his feet up on an stool, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his lap. Naturally, he’d assumed Thorin’s would be the coals of a forge. So he was surprised to find that Thorin preferred a simple, small light; the yellow-tipped wick of a candle on the wall, letting someone know what they’re awaited. A light on the porch to lead home the owner.

Thorin. An example of the other kind of light: that of personality. And not just any personality. Like the candle is to a home-owner, the _light_ of different people means more, _feels_ like more, depend on who’s looking. Where one person can turn and walk without a second glance, another’s heart may be set alight by the perfection, the _fittingness_ , that they see. Love hurts when it’s real- it ignites the soul and begs for satiating whenever paid attention. Thus it becomes a cycle, as the ache is impossible to completely ignore, and when presented with the opportunity of being drawn nearer, one finds it too difficult to refuse its call.

Moths to a light, if you will.

 

Bilbo lay awake, dwarves snoring up a storm all around him on the weathered peak of the carrock. He sunk back into the muscle-coiled arm wrapped around his waist, the body of heat pressed all the way along his back: behind his knees, on the backs of his calves, on every nub of his spine. Bathing in one another’s light, Bilbo slept peacefully in Thorin’s arms.

 

*

 

Coin after coin, goblet after goblet, cupboard after cupboard and armoury after armoury… and the Arkenstone went unfound by the weary company.

Correction: thirteen fourteenths of the company.

Bilbo sat on the battements, back settled to carved walls of the aged mountain. Beneath his robe was a weight which weighed the entire mountain itself down- a mere stone, no heavier than a small pebble and no bigger than his hand.

A mere stone that was central to the dwarven stronghold of Erebor, the heart of the Lonely Mountain. A rock. A polished piece of sediment. A measly, fruitless, uneventful and unhelpful rock.

 

Thorin passed. Twice, in fact, for Bilbo had hardly moved in the time it took for the sun to rise, pass, and start its descent. He hardly had a reason to- he didn’t _need_ to be searching for the Arkenstone with the rest of the company. It could’ve been excused by his non-dwarven descent and therefor unnecessary compulsion to search for the blasted gem… but somehow, he didn't figure that that explanation was wholly truthful.

Simply put, Bilbo hated the tunnels and caverns of the kingdom under the mountain. He hated the mountain altogether. The entire area, truth be told, was rather bland and bleak and dissatisfying and… not _home_. Not homely. Not green and lifelike and liveable. Without warning, his mind went running, scampering back to his Shire. To his hole in the ground, and the township. The river, the fields, the trees, the houses. Markets. The tavern glowing softly, raucous singing blitzing through a crisp, otherwise calm dusk.

[Home is where the heart is, the heart of whomever you love, and the heart he’d yearned for and captured was corrupted at present.]

If the mountain’s heart was a blue-white gemstone… then logically, the Shire’s heart would be bursting with colour. Vivid with it, too bright.

But.

Over the course journey- over the course of _Thorin_ -if Bilbo were to learn one very important thing, it wold be that the heart is not always reflected in the exterior. Physicality was meaningless without something to protect. It made sense that the mountain strewn of seemingly unbreakable armour bore guardianship to such an enchanting heart.

And Thorin?

Thorin was a mountain- a mountain with the most beautiful, most stunning, most endearing and ensnaring heart that Bilbo had ever had the privilege of viewing.

 

*

 

Thorin gave Bilbo his own indestructible armour; a delicate, shining, pure, strong vest. He wanted to tell Thorin that he liked it, that he knew what Thorin was doing, that the reflection of his heart was unnecessary because Thorin already had it…

Thorin didn't even know what he was doing.

Riches and gold filled every part of his motives, of his drive and want and need. And Bilbo knew, could see it there right in front of him: that last patch of rationalism closing, clouding over. He was being pushed out forcibly by a illness which he did not know how to cure.

Bilbo _hated_ it.

 

Then, for the first time in what felt like years but was probably since they first stood in the mountain without a looming dragon trying to destroy them, Thorin smiled.

 

That smile. _That_ smile was what he’d been following. The rawness in his joy, the roughness in which it had hewn itself, and the _hope_ of a home. It was the thing, sometimes the only one thing he cold think of, that made it all worth fighting for. Replacing a scowl and a vacant, elsewhere expression with contentment. Gleefully bared teeth. Unabashed laughter. A glittering in the eyes like fireflies or fire embers floating in the rising heat of a campfire that said: we’re okay- we’re okay, we’re alive, and it will all be well.

All was not well.

All would never be well if this sickness grew; Thorin’s ailment would surely consume them all, given time, the press of war, the dismissal of reason and counsel.

All was not well- Thorin’s lips downturned, flattened, his shoulders hunched, and he led Bilbo away from the others in a way that he’d never done before.

[Usually, it’d be shy touches or mischievous smiles or light, heady giggles, and sometimes it was downright displays of affection- kissing and caressing and groping too-large hands on a too-small body -and the power that their love came with- lifting him as if he were a feather on the breeze and bypassing the beds they’d said they’d left to; _blind_ with nothing but ‘ _you_ ’ and ‘ _me_ ’. ‘ _Your heart_ , and _my heart_ ’.]

A small distance away from the others, this fading person stood before Bilbo and looked straight through him. He didn’t liger his gaze on the curls around his ears, the scrunch of his nose, and certainly not the softness of his lips; something that had distracted Thorin often in the past. This person didn’t look at him… he looked _through_ him. Whether it was to something greater or because he was unimportant, Bilbo didn’t know. But it _hurt_.

This was not Thorin Oakenshield.

 

_“I was blind but now I begin to see…”_

 

 _No_ , Bilbo tamped the urge to yell in the dwarf’s face, _you are blinding yourself further with this… sickness! I have the Arkenstone, I have it, look, and I… I can’t believe you are mistrusting your own kin, above all else that’s happening, above me, because I was the one who ‘never should have come’ in the first place, was I not? I should be in the comforts of home, I don't belong with you in your perilous journey for a home but I came anyway because of you. I shouldn't even be here, I’ll go home right now and take this with me and you shall never see it again. And you’ll stop this… this madness! Just, stop it._

Of course, all Bilbo could do was remain rooted to the spot, listening, paralysed by the venom in his tone, the toxicity of betrayal in which he spoke.

 

_“One of them is false.”_

 

Preposterous, wrong, this was all terribly, terribly _wrong_. Wrongness that settled in the pit of Bilbo’s stomach and rotted, acidic and achingly; wrongness that pounded in his temples and heated the tips of his ears; wrongness that shifted the ground beneath his feet, and stung the back of his eyes, and twisted his lungs into a useless pair of wrung-out socks; stinking and warped and too sodden to dry.

 

_“I will not part with a single piece of the treasure, not a single cent of it.”_

 

Deep rumbling of the throat of the world, of rocks clashing in crevasses that reached to the core of the earth, of the halls of Erebor caving in, collapsing in and in and in and _in_ until nothing was left. Until no sunlight could reach them.

 _Dragon_.

You’re a _dragon_.

Dragon, dragon, _dragon_.

He retreated from Bilbo, slowly, menacingly, predatorily. Bilbo needed no more assurance that it was not a defeated withdrawal than the way in which this person, whoever he’d become, stood across from him.

His curling tail of shadows swept dangerously close. The dwarf drew himself to his full height, spikes clicking and shifting at Bilbo’s throat with razored points ready to pierce. His wings of the heightening power holding his heart in a vicelike grip, a stranglehold, unfurled in a wondrously frightening way. Even as their fellowship marched past, those unforgiving, veiled, clouded and false, false, _false_ eyes didn’t flicker away one inch.

Torchlight shone off the battle armour, the scales of his hide, and the glowing embers in his eyes were cast of molten earth and the burning of desire.

This was a terrifying beast- and although Bilbo was not afraid, he _wasn’t_ , of what his leader had become… he was sure that this foe would be far more difficult to overcome than the dragon Smaug ever was.

This friendly skin- not even thinking about what once lay beneath -gave it a perfect disguise. A figure that had once empathised and assisted- now destroying and basking in selfishness. Free to do so for the position, the ranking, the royalty. He wished it could be as easy as talking Thorin back into his own mind, but if that demonstration was anything to go by, it was all he could do to store away his words.

 

Bilbo hated a lot of things. He also wanted to tell Thorin a lot of things. That time was not then, and the outlook wasn’t favourable for a foreseeable heart to heart- not when one of said hearts was shrivelled and blackened, and not when the eve of war was upon them.

 

*

 

The time came and went.

A flash of the eyes told Bilbo that Thorin was fine, he was back, _they_ were fine… but in all the action, neither of them had time to do little more. _Time_ to do what they really wanted- talk. They _couldn’t_. Bilbo _could_ relay what he’d been ordered- ordered himself because Gandalf was a caring fool -to relay and hope that the forewarning was enough to get them out with all parts intact and functioning.

[By this point, reassurance was as close as he’d get to an ‘I forgive you’ and an ‘I’m sorry’ and another _maybe_ -final, _maybe-not_ -final ‘I love you’.]

Everything after moved in staccato, halting and rushing like their jagged breaths as the need for air was forgotten; the paces of battle as easy as breathing.

Or, in Bilbo’s case, as easy as panicking.

 

Drums began.

The orcs dragged forth their prize- a lone dwarf prince.

Azog executed Fili on the cragged watchtower, dropping his armor-clad body down, cracking it upon impact to display a drained, stilled heart— the winds stopped blowing for a moment, almost sorrowfully.

Silence reigned.

Bilbo and Thorin stood side by side, watching helplessly across a frozen river.

Dwalin was somewhere in the background, hatred growing and blending with the pain of loss into a cocktail of refined, single-railed fury.

Kili screamed silently for his brother, sprung into vengeful attack- Thorin followed, Bilbo left in the whirlwinding emotions he was barely able to process before being advanced on by the endless swarm of their enemy.

 

He remembered little more than pelting rocks and watching Dwalin knock orc by orc to the floor and thinking nothing but ‘ _Thorin, Thorin, Thorin_ ’, and how he never wanted to see that armour open up to a listless and empty heart.

 

*

 

If the falling of Fili was a rusted, serrated blade to the chest, then the scene before Bilbo was a red hot mace dragged clean down the middle, in slow motion, with spikes and barbs and tipped with poison.

[Once, a great number of months ago, Bilbo would’ve feared for his life stepping foot onto a frozen-over river. He probably wouldn’t even be outside in such weather, let alone sprint along the glacial stretch that ended in an unforgiving drop.]

 

Thorin’s voice was slow, thick, laced with pain and fatigue. Mostly, it was peaceful. Peaceful. Finally.

[Bilbo _hated_ it- he hated that it came to _this_ for peace to finally come. He hated that, out of all the things Thorin could have said, he apologised.]

“I am sorry that I made you a part of my perils-”

“No!” _Never apologise for any of it, not one second. Not now, not in a minute, not in a few days when you’re rested and healing, not ever._ “I am glad to have shared in your perils… that is more than any Baggins deserves.” _It’s far more than I deserved. I wasn’t deserving of your gaze, what it promised- the adventure, the journey, the danger, the company. You. I shouldn’t be the one walking away, walking home, when you’ve fought so desperately and unwaveringly to reclaim yours. Because you will. You just need to stay, to just… see me, and not close your eyes, and… not be dead._

Those eyes flickered, that smile made an appearance. Bilbo couldn’t handle much more of it. Here was Thorin, slipping away, and he was powerless. _Where is Gandalf? Where is help?! Why can’t I stop this, why can’t I save him?_

Thorin’s exhales went short, clipped, and his inhales shaky. Uncertainly hinted around the crinkling skin at the corners of his eyes- as if he was unsure what to say. As if _anything_ he could say right now wouldn’t be the right thing.

“Farewell, Master Burglar. Go back to your books, your fireplace. Plant your trees, watch them grow.” _With you, I want to watch it grow with you. You forgot to put yourself there, because you will be, you wont be gone. There’s an ‘I’ after the ‘you’, Thorin. There always will be._ “If more of us valued home above gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Home.

Home is where the heart is, home is a candle on the windowsill that’s waiting for someone to come home to. Home is waking up safe in the morning, and falling asleep unburdened at night. Home is light and laughter and love. _Home is you, Thorin. How can I find it when I can see it crumbling? How can I fight for a home when there isn’t one to fight for? How can I… Tell me what to do, Thorin, please. Where is my home, now?_

 

“The eagles are here…” _Just like the last time your armour broke and death tried to rope your heart away from me_ , “The e-”

Bilbo choked on a sob, the one that had been worming its way up and up since the moment he caught sight of Thorin- alive and moving and peaceful-looking in the sun; its rays cast across the battlefield in a victorious light.

Then, the dwarven king crumpled at the knees and fell aside to the bronze glow- fallen to victory far more willingly than he had fallen to defeat.

[Because Thorin was presumptuous, and he’d presumed that he’d reclaim the Mountain- his home. He was allowed to have both, for a short time.]

 

The light will fade from the sky. The snow will blanket the fallen men and elves and dwarves- the world will keep on, and it will not stop for dead kings, dead brothers, dead friends, or dead lovers.

 

Bilbo held his sigh of congratulations over the duration of their journey [on foot, on horseback, on eagle-back, inside and on top of barrels, in the hands of their captors, guided by friends, chased by wargs and orcs and goblins and spiders and a _dragon_ ], saved it for their success… not this distraught whimper for the second in which Thorin’s heart stopped. A relieving sound he’d stored since he’d first seen the dwarf with his guard down- singing about their grandiose home in Bilbo’s own cozy, underground domain. And now, burying his face in braided, bristled hair, all that came out was a long, animalistic whine of a shattered heart.

He never wanted to watch the light of Thorin Oakenshield slip between his fingers, let the cheer and brightness lying beneath the rocky surface be clouded and patched away by sadness and loss and pain and _death_.

But that was what had happened.

 

 

[Bilbo _hated_ a lot of things. But he hated nothing more than being disrupted, uprooted, and removed from his _home_.]

**Author's Note:**

> THAT WAIL HE LETS OUT THO JUST  
> MARTIN FREEMAN ST A H P  
> UR TOO GOOD AT CRYING OVER DEAD FRIENDS-PROBABLY-LOVERS  
> I DECREE NO MORE  
> HEART IS WHERE THE FUCKING H O M E IS


End file.
